


Love is the Strongest Addiction I Know

by theonlywaterintheforest



Series: river/doctor ficathon [2]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Declarations Of Love, F/M, Love Letters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-22
Updated: 2016-04-22
Packaged: 2018-06-03 21:08:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6626341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theonlywaterintheforest/pseuds/theonlywaterintheforest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thousands of years after the Gallifrey's most infamous figure dies for the last time, a young archeologist is tasked with going through his many journals to catalog his incredible life. It is she who learns that his love for River Song did not die with his fourteenth regeneration.</p><p>Or his fifteenth.</p><p>Or his twentieth.</p><p>Or his twenty-fourth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love is the Strongest Addiction I Know

**Author's Note:**

> for the [river/doctor ficathon](http://riverdoctorficathon.tumblr.com/post/138623352033/thanks-to-all-of-you-who-submitted-prompts-if-you)
>
>> River, pages from the Doctors diary. (requested by iveonlyseentheface)
> 
> Work title is a modified lyric from Savages's "Sad Person". First chapter title from "Bathtubs" by Royal Canoe. 

There was a flurry of activity in the large library. Men and women were extracting books from shelves with a calculated effort, making vocal annotations and jotting down notes while delicately lifting the covers and fingering the pages. Some were ancient, millions of years old and precious, others were tattered and stained copies of common mass-produced paperbacks. No matter the scarcity, the men and women treated each tome with same respect as they searched for any glimpse into the former owner’s rather incredible life.

Among the excited effort were two women who stood still in the chaos. They were in front of the tallest bookcase in the entire library with their arms crossed over their chests, taking in the enormity of the three-story case before them. They stood between two heavy black doors, carved ornamentally with a scrolling they recognized as early Pylaxi art, the kind only ever found protecting relics of powerful gods. The two women had rolled their eyes at this discovery: the owner was not Pylaxian and while he had been given many years, he was not a god. He was a mortal.

As was proven by the fact he was dead, and had been for several centuries.

It took that long to get into his spacecraft, which had been stolen from the historians’ homeworld thousands and thousands of years before, never returned even though he had promised he’d bring it back. They had found it buried in a highly metallic soil nearly ten meters from the surface of a planet long abandoned after a nuclear holocaust. The craft itself was encased in one of the densest and hardest materials ever discovered, protected by electric fields and curses of exactly 831 worlds, locked with a key that would only ever be granted to its owner, and guarded by a sentient force who had grown rather attached to her pilot.

They wouldn’t be in it right now if they hadn’t bargained with the spacecraft herself. After getting through all of the barricades the owner had set up upon his death, the sentient force killed 38 men and women who tried to enter through various means. It was only when a historian mentioned this particular craft’s rather colorful history did they realize how loyal she was to her former owner. They knew they’d have to talk with her and try to have her see reason. They just wanted to a greater insight to the most infamous man their world had ever created.

Two more people died and the president of the planet’s highest race personally paid the box a visit before someone was finally able to reach an agreement with the sentient force inside.

“Explain to me why it’s just the two of us working on this section?” the younger of the two questioned with a sigh.

“Part of the agreement with the TARDIS,” the elder woman responded with affection in her voice. She uncrossed her arms so she could wrap her long silver hair around her fist and tie it back with a ribbon. “She got to pick who would look into the Doctor’s diaries. We had asked for ten people. She chose two. You and me.”

The younger woman sighed again, her gaze up along the top shelf. “This is going to take us months.”

“Maybe even years. They’ll probably be done with all the other rooms before we’re even to his eighth regeneration.”

A male voice whistled from behind them. “Plaistria? Can you come over here for a moment? I can’t tell exactly what this writing is but I feel like you may know. I think I’ve seen it in your office before.”

The older woman smiled at her partner. “Check with a couple of these—carefully!—to see if they’re in chronological order. Use the protocol when you do so, okay? We cannot have these going out of the order he placed them in, Rahqallasaat.”

She tried not to cringe at the mention of her full name. Plaistria had reserved it only for when she was deadly serious as a way to let the younger woman know disobedience wouldn’t be tolerated. Every week she found herself hoping for a day when her supervisor wouldn’t use the name as she hated it so. Sure, she had been named after a great Gallifreyan inventor, but the name itself was outdated and nearly laughable. She preferred her nickname of Qall, which was also the shortened version of a popular Gallifreyan name, Qallivissanai.

Qall had known Plaistria for nearly two decades, having had her as a professor at the Academy in the final years of her curriculum. Upon graduation she was shocked to find that Plaistria had requested that Qall be placed under her care for her required post-graduation internship as the professor usually took the student with the highest grades. Qall didn’t know for nearly two years why she had been chosen over the brightest in her graduating class. She would find out one particularly drunken night out with her peers, when someone’s tongue was feeling loose: Plaistria had admired Qall’s extreme passion for uncovering the history, final grades be damned.

She glanced over her shoulder to see if Plaistria was paying attention. She was not following the strict rules just to look at a handful of diaries to see if they were in chronological order, not when they’d spend months (or years!) following those strict rules as they made their way down the intimidating shelves. She reached for a small maroon canvas journal from the far edge of the shelf at chest height, flipping through a couple pages to make sure the writing was consistent. It was: tall and strict, the letters precise. Written in all capitals, the forms never touched. Qall threw her long blonde braid over her shoulder as she reached for a small device on her hip. She scrolled through several pages of notes until she found a sampling of the sixteenth Doctor’s handwriting. It was the very same.

She flipped through the pages to see if the journal contained notice of any particular event in history in which she could search. She noticed immediately that the Doctor, at least in this incarnation, never dated his entries. She would then have to look for something significant, something that he would be famous for.

After quickly flipping through half the journal, she found something she could use.

_I understand why they wanted me to be there when they signed their constitution, but I still don’t think I should have been the final signature on the document. I’m not Yallasallan! Yes, I did help free them from the Yickinaw, but I’m not one of them. I’m not even there now! I signed it, jumped in the TARDIS, and left the planet! I don’t know why they were so insistent._

_I should go a thousand years into their future and see how loudly everyone is laughing when I bring up the alien’s signature on their most important document. I think I’ll do that when I’m done here in Dovan._

She reached again for the device on her hip, looking up notable dates in Yallasal history. There it was: mentions of a great and powerful man, who helped create a treaty between the two planets so that the Yickinaw could have the resources they want while the Yallasal gained their freedom. Dirty blond hair in a smart cut with a solid jaw, wide shoulders and a penchant for leather driving gloves, suede jackets and boots with a slight heel. The sixteenth Doctor.

Qall looked down at the journal and noticed that the page she had been looking at was indented. Writing, scrawled many times to make the text bolder, was raised on the page. She fingered it, noticing that the letters she traced with her digits were an S, another S, an I, and an M. Swallowing deeply, the Gallifreyan carefully flipped the page. In one full page there were just three words, scrawled large with a heavy hand.

_I MISS HER._

She licked her lips slowly. Who was this woman? Was it one of his many companions? One of several wives? Maybe even a creature? He did that from time to time. He was known to befriend brutal creatures like they were mere housecats.

But Qall had a feeling she knew who it was.

She flicked through the journal’s remaining pages, hoping to find a reference that would further clarify the woman, but she didn’t find one. She placed the journal back on the shelf, removing the neighbor to the left. She quickly flipped through that one as well, coming to a stop when she saw the word she had been looking for all along: River.

_She would have liked these people. They were forward, almost too much, and laughed when it wasn’t appropriate. They could talk lightly about the cruelest things, like they didn’t realize the harm they had done! She would be at home, my River._

The Doctor wasn’t a particularly nostalgic man, nor did he like to bring up those he had lost…most of the time. She had learned many years ago that the vast majority of his regenerations held this trait—it was one of the few he carried with him his entire life.

Every regeneration except one. The sixteenth incarnation.

He was a more emotional man. Sure, he had always been prone to outbursts of anger or spells of intense euphoria, but the sixteenth Doctor was notably passionate. He fought with generals and cried with priests. He was affectionate and bold but was also documented as dark and frigid. He was far more likely than any of the other Doctors to tell you exactly how he felt, so the Doctor’s declaration of heartbreak, scrawled so deeply into the page that the pen nearly tore through the paper, was not unexpected. She should have known who he was from the raw sentiment rather than from his penmanship.

Qall peeked over her shoulder to see her partner bent over a book, her eyes squinted. She went back to her journal, flicking through the pages to see if there were other references to the one wife who transcended regenerations. It had been well known that the Doctor loved her through most of his remaining faces (except for that one face that strangely was only attracted to men. Four thousand years of documented pansexuality only to stick to one gender for a three-hundred-year stint).

She found another entry.

_Some days I don’t miss her at all. It’s almost…reassuring, for lack of a better word. To feel like I’m finally moving on, after all this time. To feel like she doesn’t have a cage around my hearts to say that they’re hers and hers alone._

_But then again, I don’t want this. I don’t want to feel free of her. I haven’t seen River in so, so long, but I want her here. Remembering her, feeling the hold she has over me…I’m not sure that feeling can be replaced. And I don’t want to forget it. I don’t. I’ll be lying if I ever say I do. She’s been gone for...gods, nearly a thousand years now, but I still remember those curls like I ran my hands through them yesterday._

_When I have moments like this, I like to remember that in some part of the universe she’s still here. She’s terrorizing an entire planet with charm they never knew existed, and I’m in this timeline alongside her. She’s still here. She doesn’t know this face exists but I know she exists. It’s comforting. She’s still out there. She will always be out there._

_But that realization is pain as well. I know that technically I could touch her again. That golden skin and those dreadful curls and those sinful lips. I could but I never will. She’s gone. She’s gone and some days I don’t miss her at all. It’s almost reassuring._

The breath caught in Qall’s chest.

“Good find!” she heard Plaistria cry behind her, followed by a sound she assumed was a smack on the shoulder. “Now, if you’ll excuse me…”

Qall hurried to place the journal just where she found it, sitting beside its burgundy mate. She then turned her attention back up to the top of the stacks, keeping her gaze there until her partner returned to her side.

“So?” Plaistria inquired, crossing her arms again.

“They’re in order” was all she offered. Her eyes never left the first set of journals.


End file.
